Various embodiments described herein relate to computer systems, methods and program products and, more particularly, to management of computer systems, methods and computer program products.
The costs of having host/server computers in a data center switched on and running may be significant, both in terms of resources (e.g., CPU, RAM, disk as well as power/cooling etc.) and money. For example, the costs of server power consumption and cooling systems to dissipate the generated heat may be major expenses in modern data centers.
To maintain effective operation and sustain profitability, power management systems may be used to reduce power usage while simultaneously satisfying customer requirements. For example, a typical server may consume a relatively high amount of power even when idle, due for instance to chip leakage current and/or power consumption of other supporting components, such as disk drives and network routers.
Turning a system off and directing traffic to a subset of available servers during non-peak hours may be one approach to saving power during periods of low traffic. Some such technologies for server shutdown may mainly be based on manual actions by system administrators. However, having to manually power on hosts when required may be tedious and/or difficult to manage, for example, due to the amount of manual effort required and/or due to over-provisioning that may be used to ensure that performance goals are met. Likewise, while some server shutdown/startup technologies may be automated, they are typically driven by simple policies. For example, some automated resource management solutions may simply base the conditions to detect host shutdown/startup on the time of day and/or date.